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a few days ago i was contacted about a design that i had up on Behance. they liked a package design that i did while in school and was wondering if it was in use. i respond by saying no and that i would love to work on his new packaging design as freelance.

today he replied that he has already made his own label but would like to see some examples of what i could do. i haven't seen his version of the label.

i definitely, if we move forward, will let him know that i will not do work for free and must charge him. what i'm afraid of if he just goes F it lifts more or less my concept & design for use on his packaging (its a pretty simple design but strong in concept).

what are my rights in this case? at the very least i would like to persuade him to not lift my work or pay me for the "rights" to it. i'm not very well versed on the legal side of design.

edit: i should add that the name of the brand that he is launching is different but very close to my student project (a swap of words).

Awesome. If all designers, from the intern to the new kid on the block, were to learning billing and invoicing straight away, all of our wages might be better. Because they will ask, oh will they ask for "samples" of a logo, brochure, or whatever if they can get it. No one has respect for designers.

truth. unfortunately the firm i work for, and all of our competitors in ny, are starting to do spec work more and more. the recession made many places desperate enough to do it :/ works for some, disaster for others.

I think most designers at some point have fudged a little and perhaps done extra or free work to convince an employer to hire them. Don't do it I say. I haven't had good experiences and most designers I talk to haven't either. Does anyone ever ask a mechanic, "Can you fix this left brake? I just want to see how good of a job you'll do on the rest of this car."

Part of our interview process is very similar to the product we actually produce, we ask them to design and code something very simple. We'd never use it in production, we could knock it out in an hour, but we want to see how they analyze and produce a project. We had a guy pull out thinking we were trying to get spec work out of him. It's one of the best ways we can analyze how they will fit in with our team.

Well... honestly for all practical purposes you don't have many options. The good thing is that they contacted you. The concept that you created was for a student project (I am assuming), so it doesn't represent a commercial product. If they were ripping off a commercial product, the company that owned the design could pursue some kind of legal action. You could too; if you found out that they lifted your design. But chances are you might never find out. Also pursuing any kind of legal action is VERY expensive. The burden would be on you to prove that they stole your design. If they changed the design concept, even a little bit, it would be very difficult to prove. Also you would probably only be entitled to minor damages. Copyright law is completely f'ed up in this country. also it was never meant to protect design concepts in the 1st place. But that is a whole other discussion. Continue your discussion with them, tell him your rate. Maybe slip a white lie that you registered the trademark on all your work before you put it up on behance for your protection. Good luck.

If you used whatever this was while in school they may have the rights to it and not you. I am basing this on some fine print that I caught when I was in school. Its was worded similarly to "we can own the rights to and can use any images of you and/or your work/projects/published items." I have never heard of a school coming after a student or graduate (great PR I am sure...) but you never know...

The other posters are correct though, tell this person that you are glad they like what you made and would be happy to assist them in completing/modifying this for their own use..for appropriate compensation. If they don't bit then start digging in the reddit lawyer thing :-\

Not sure, but this is interesting so I looked up the rights as assigned by Behance and here are a couple inserts (I would encourage you to look yourself):

For the information our lawyers make us include, read on:

USER'S GRANT OF LIMITED LICENSE: Behance Inc does not claim any permanent ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, in the modern age of content hosting and the propagation and streaming of content across the web, we require a limited license to host and display this content, as specified below, which lasts as long as you chose to host your work on the service. For example, one purpose for this limited license is to enable Behance to stream and present your work across the Behance Network and partner sites that present your work professionally - linking back to your portfolio. This day in age, we require a limited license for your content in order to present it in the many places and various forms across the Behance Network sites and other sites powered by the Behance Network platform and/or the Behance Network API.

Behance will NEVER assume ownership of your work, and the artist's copyright settings, as selected by the artist, will remain associated with each published project. This limited license is required for the nature of Behance Network's platform. Work submitted to Behance remains owned by the artist, under the artist's selected copyright settings, and artists decide whether or not to sell their work to third parties - Behance does NOT act as an intermediary in selling creative work.

b. Thus, all Content is either the copyrighted property of Behance, Inc., or the copyrighted content of its Users that created and submitted the content, and its affiliates or licensors or, in some cases, the content is assigned a license under the Creative Commons licensing system (when specified). As between Behance, Inc. and you, Behance is the sole owner of all Behance-generated content on the Site, including without limitation, all applicable U.S. and non-U.S. copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, and other intellectual property rights thereto. Participant in Behance retains all rights, titles, and interests in and to the content provided by the Participant hereunder (including, without limitation, the copyrights in and to the Participant's Content), subject to the non-exclusive rights in the licenses granted to Behance under this agreement. Participant is free to grant similar rights to others during and after the Term of this Agreement.

c. All individual articles, content and other elements comprising this Service are also copyrighted works. In addition to abiding by any rights each author may have retained in connection with each such article, you must also abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained in this Service.

d. Unless expressly permitted by Behance, Inc. or advertisers, you may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, enter into a database, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, rent, lease, sell, or in any way exploit any part of this Service. You may download Content for your own personal use as follows: you may make one print copy that is limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. In addition, these files may not be used to construct any kind of database.

a. You shall: Comply with all of the Terms of Use found on this page.
Comply with any requirements or restrictions imposed on usage of the content by their respective owners. Although the Behance API can be used to provide you with access to Behance projects, neither Behance's provision of the Behance API to you nor your use of the Behance API override the project owners' requirements and restrictions, which may include "all rights reserved" notices, Creative Commons licenses or other terms and conditions that may be agreed upon between you and the owners. In ALL cases, you are solely responsible for making use of Behance projects in compliance with the project owners' requirements or restrictions.

...... I hope that helps! It was nice of them to contact you. I would definitely ask for some form of compensation (never work for free!) if it is similar enough. Some people just want the work for free.... I would recommend in the future either a watermark on work (I know, it's unappealing), or definitely include metadata so you can track it. There is also software/search engines that reverse search that can find similar enough images and monitor your work for the future.

Np! I am a designer myself and I was curious about the situation so I am looking into not only for your situation, but just as much my own curiosity :) I also found:

Not only is there Behance to use as a leg to stand on I found this which would also support you, as the creator:

The copyright on a derivative work covers only new material, appearing for the first time in the derivative work; it does not cover any preexisting material from the original. So the character of Superman is not covered by the copyright on the film Superman, since the copyright on that character pre-dated the movie; but any elements new to the film received their copyright from the date of Superman II’s creation. What this means are two things: (1) if you license a work from its author so you can make a derivative work based on the original, you do not obtain the copyright on the original—you gain only the right to make the derivative work agreed upon; the owner retains all rights to the original and all its elements, and (2) the copyright on the original is not extended by the creation of the derivative work. This used to mean more than it does today, since copyrights exist for the life of an author plus 70 years, and if an author makes a derivative of his own work, then his copyright won’t change regardless. But what it does mean is that if a second author makes a derivative work of the first author’s original, the copyright on the elements of the original is measured by the life of the original’s author—not the derivative work’s.

With “new versions” of work becoming more commonplace, the lines between a new creation, a derivative work and copied work can be blurred. With all these gray areas, it’s important to do your homework before you set out to create and publicize something you believe is completely black and white. The take-away: get a license or get a lawyer.

as everyone already said, and you know, have him sign a contract try to work with him, but basically if the dude wants to rip off your design he'll do it. that's been my experience. i wouldn't get too worried about it though, people are going to rip off a good design no matter where you're at in your design career. Just write it off as imitation being the most sincere form of flattery and keep working.

You're not a lawyer so you probably shouldn't be giving vague and mostly incorrect advice.

The fact that it exists and is published on Behance proves his copyright. Boom, case closed.

If the design is stolen, its very easy to smear the jerk throughout the online community relating to his company industry, their competition would probably eat it up. In addition you can just send a boilerplate C&D letter outlining the similarities and require compensation or that action will be taken. That usually does the trick. But the fact that they're contacting him/her shows good faith.

Just get on the phone with the prospective and communicate with them, and work out a design. It's probably the only way they knew how to break the ice. Try to figure out what they liked about your project and what you can do with them, then mention your hourly rate and deposit, etc...

If anything, Behance has a limited license on his work as well. We're talking about conceptual student work that was posted on a public website that takes a 'limited license' on all of the work posted there. He has no proof of copyright as far as I am concerned and would be foolish to go to court with this.

You are essentially conceding to what I said. There is nothing for him to do other than to talk to the person who was kind enough to reach out to the kid. A lawyer would scoff at a situation like this.

One of the benefits of our industry is that the lobbyists who work for the RIAA and MPAA effect our rights too. So anything we make, copyrighted or otherwise, has an implied ownership to the creator. As long as he can prove that it was created before the other guys then he is clear to sue. Even if you design something for a client, and don't put into the contract that ownership is transferred, then the client is technically licensing your design.

The bigger problem is that its not illegal to be inspired by others work and so with limited deviation he would be in the clear. Personally, it sounds like OP is getting worked up pretty quick.